As you may have noticed, after the 4.0.3 update the styles list in the palettes and in the menu contains some additional styles whose name is preceded by a diamond sign. Styles that were not there before. I would like to use this post to explain what's going on and perhaps offer some advice on what to do.

First, what are these styles anyway? The diamond sign appears before a style name if that style doesn't belong to the document's style set. We call these "Document styles" meaning that the style is refereed to by the document and not by the style set.

In the past Mellel only showed you the document styles that were applied in the part of text you were editing. For example, if you were editing a header, the palette or menu would show the document styles that were applied in the text of the header (if any). But, if you were to edit the main text in the same document, you would not see these header-only document styles in the palette or menu.

With Mellel 4.0.3 we made a change to the way document styles are detected and made it more sensitive: instead of showing you only the document styles in the text you were editing, Mellel now shows you document styles in the entire document, including all the headers and footers and even things like auto-title formats. This means that if the page number element in the TOC format for level 10 is applied with a certain document style, that document style would appear in the styles menu even if you didn't use level 10 in the text or inserted a TOC.

Another 4.0.3 change in that area is that the document styles will not be immediately eliminated simply by removing the effected text or applying the effected text. The document styles are eliminated only after saving, closing and re-opening the document.

Note that all the document styles you now see in the palette/menu existed there before, you simply didn't see them. If you're worried that something is not right with Mellel or that your document is somehow damaged - worry not - the only effect of these changes is the content of the palette/menu and nothing more.

What to do?
First, if this doesn't bother you per se (that is, seeing these in the menu/palette) you can simply continue to enjoy life and Mellel as you did till now.
If you want to eliminate these then you need to follow this procedure
1. Locate where the style is applied.
2. Select the text where it is applied.
3. Apply a style that does belong to the style set.
4. Save, close and re-open (no need to do this after every single change but unless you do so the document styles will persist until you close the document even if there are no longer referenced by any part of the document)

Where are these styles hiding? Beside the actual document text (which you can cleanup using File->Replace Styles) you might want to look in the following locations:
1. Auto-title setup formats (especially frequently unused ones like the formats for the upper levels etc)
2. Hidden headers & footers (for example, a first page header for a style that doesn't have a separate first page, the header is still there but not used)
3. Unused footnote/endnote streams

What to do?
First, if this doesn't bother you per se (that is, seeing these in the menu/palette) you can simply continue to enjoy life and Mellel as you did till now.
If you want to eliminate these then you need to follow this procedure
1. Locate where the style is applied.
2. Select the text where it is applied.
3. Apply a style that does belong to the style set.
4. Save, close and re-open (no need to do this after every single change but unless you do so the document styles will persist until you close the document even if there are no longer referenced by any part of the document)

Where are these styles hiding? Beside the actual document text (which you can cleanup using File->Replace Styles) you might want to look in the following locations:
1. Auto-title setup formats (especially frequently unused ones like the formats for the upper levels etc)
2. Hidden headers & footers (for example, a first page header for a style that doesn't have a separate first page, the header is still there but not used)
3. Unused footnote/endnote streams

Having been still battling this issue. Even following these instructions, I have not been able to delete the diamond styles. As a matter of fact the diamond character style is not applied anywhere in the document. Hence I cannot use "Replace styles" because the style never appears in that Replace dialog. Interestingly, the diamond character style name "Helvetica Neue Regular 13" is one I have never setup.

I just sent the document. It has a character style named "Helvetica Neue Regular 13" which I have never defined. On my desktop I downloaded the app again and reinstalled. I was able to get a template without it. But on the laptop that has not solved anything.

Where did you send it? I'm not seeing it in our support nor in my personal email (make sure to send it to eyal, not ori)
Please note that you don't need to re-install, the built in templates are clean (except for some of the demo publication ones) and if you're creating new documents based on these, they should be clean but if you have a template that is based on a modified old template you may see some of theses diamonds.

I was on v4.02 and had finally managed to clean up all my custom templates. No more document styles in them with black diamonds. Now, after I upgraded to v4.03, they seem to be all back again and their number seems to have tripled, to say the least.

I used to be able to use Replace Styles in the File menu to get rid of those document styles, but now this has no effect, the diamonds still remain.

With Mellel 4.0.3 we made a change to the way document styles are detected and made it more sensitive: instead of showing you only the document styles in the text you were editing, Mellel now shows you document styles in the entire document, including all the headers and footers and even things like auto-title formats.

I understand that from a logical point of view, this may be justifiable, but the user should be able to *easily* replace those document styles with styles from a global style set. The purpose of a global style set, I think, is to allow the user to always use the same styles when he or she is working on identical documents.

Right now, this seems to be impossible. Just like "shades" already mentioned, there are now document styles in the styles palette that don't show up in the Replace Style pane (File > Replace Styles.) See the following screenshot:

I don't think it is a good idea to stay on 4.0.2. We've fixed several bugs that existed in that version with 4.0.3 and as annoying as this "diamond styles" issue may seem I don't think it is balances out with the speed enhancements (which are actually related to the diamond styles issue) and the bug fixes.

I would like to point out a few things regarding this:

First, there are some issues with 4.0.3 that cause the menus to show diamond styles that don't belong to the document. It could be that your document is actually clear of all these pesky diamonds and it just shows you something different in the palette. These issues will be fixed with Mellel 4.1 which is now in advanced beta testing stages. (this is build 41012 for those of you who are beta testing Mellel)

Second, we will offer better control over these with future updates. We wanted to make something for 4.1 but it didn't make the cut. Stay tuned.

Third and most importantly, this is really just a cosmetic thing relating to what's shown in the palette/menu. The styles are still there (ignoring the issue mentioned above) even if you use Mellel 4.0.2 and don't see them in the menu.

All this not to say that we don't understand the annoyance. We are fully aware that this is troubling and we are doing our best to improve the situation. I think the Mellel 4.1 will really make things much nicer in that regard.

A long-time issue is that you can't search for text styled with a document character style. When you bring up the "find" dialog, the diamond styles are hidden in the character style palette.

… and instead "any character style" is selected. I agree with ymeroz, this needs to be fixed.

However, it is possible to search for a document character style if one uses the Attributes tab in the Character palette.

I seem to have problems finding *paragraph* styles. When I enter the small "Anything" icon into the find box and then try to apply a paragraph style to it, the paragraph style is applied to the document text instead where the insertion point was last time in the document. This is more than frustrating. Is there really no way to find a certain paragraph style?